View full sizeSusan Grabel's "Here She Is" is part of the "Venus Comes of Age" exhibit up now at the Ceres Gallery in Chelsea.Courtesy the artist

STATEN ISLAND, NY -- Susan Grabel, the sculptor whose 35-year retrospective took place last spring at the Staten Island Museum, thought she might be finished with her “Venus” sculptures, a nearly 15-year series of aged female forms presented as classical nude torsos.

She was mistaken: At Ceres Gallery last week, the West Brighton resident installed “Venus Comes of Age.” It has some of the work shown last year, with new pieces. It was only recently that she noticed how adaptable the basic “Venus,” is, how it can be carved up, isolated and recombined.

Lately, she’s introducing bright color — blue, red and yellow — into works like “Venus in Full Color.” The show has prints, reliefs, wall pieces and three dimensional works.

Early Venus sculptures were small-scale, realistic and made of clay. A little later, Grabel “translated” them into handmade paper, a articulate substance that almost seems warm and easily brings weather-beaten flesh to mind.

The Venuses, all modeled directly from real women, form a big-bellied and sturdy sort of sisterhood, timeless but aged and marked by gravity and work.

Several real women were the basis for the form. All the generations of the form resemble their predecessors and their successors closely. It’s a family. Somehow all the variations also recall all the conventional Venus depictions, de Milo and Rubens, etc. etc.

Among the foremothers is the small (10 inch) “Venus Variation, Small Back Relief” (1998), a touchingly human little fragment, careworn but alert. Some of the newest are cast-paper prints that employ parts of the figure almost as abstract elements.

The project has an impeccable socio-political agenda that’s hard to argue with. The artist believes that there is beauty in the hard facts of humanity, age, time, gravity and avoirdupois. It’s a radical stance in an era when even people who are very, very old avail themselves of plastic surgery.

In some ways, the show is aimed directly aimed at television faces like Joan Rivers, taut survivor of who knows how many allegedly beautifying procedures. What is she trying to prove at age 79?

At Ceres, “Venus” is getting an unusually appealing, well-lit and sensibly organized installation, which is exactly what she deserves.

Ceres, at 547 W. 27th St., Manhattan (Chelsea), is open Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. (Thursday until 8 p.m.). Visit ceresgallery.org for more information.